Recipe adapted from Savory Sweet Life who in turn, adapted it from Paula Deen’s Home Cooking.

Special thanks to Scharffen Berger, LorAnn Oils Inc, and Three Twins Ice Cream for providing samples free of charge for me to use. I was not reimbursed or compensated in anyway for this post, nor do I individually endorse any of the products used. Feel free to use whatever products you are comfortable with.

HI Irvin – This is just fab! And you’ve left me speechless – err, wordless! I attended your lecture at the Foodbuzz conference in San Fran and thought it was excellent and you’re very funny and a prolific presenter.

Ok great thanks 🙂
another thing (sorry I forgot to ask in the first place) the only ramequins I have are fairly shallow (I normally use them for crème brulée) and someone told me it won’t work for lava cakes because the center will cook too fast, any suggestions?

Yeah, you don’t want a shallow ramekin, which are great for crème brulée’s as they create a good brulée to custard ratio, but not so good for cakes like this as the entire thing will cook too fast.

You can get cheap oven proof ramekins at stores like Marshall’s, TJ Maxx or Ross, and they also function as a great prep bowls. I like to use them for salt, fresh ground pepper, chopped herbs etc. when cooking – it makes me feel all “food network” when I do.

That said, if you don’t want to buy more kitchen equipment, you can try using a muffin tin. I’ve never done it myself, but in theory it should work. Since muffin tins are smaller (and the metal pan is thinner than ceramic ramekins) you’ll probably end up with 8 smaller cakes that cook faster. Make sure to adjust the bake time (check around 6 to 8 minutes, but it may take 10 minutes, depending on your oven).

The other thing to take into account is that you might want to take them out of the oven more underdone than usual, as you’ll have to wait for the pan to cool down and then lift each cake out with a thin butter knife to plate them. As the pan cools, the cake will continue to cook a bit. If you try this route, come back and tell me how they turn out!

Thanks Jay! There’s a lot of prep work that goes into the wordless recipes. I storyboard out every photo to make sure that I’m not missing any important steps that would confuse people.

Each photo has to be carefully composed to convey the information properly since there’s no text to accompany it. Probably setting up each shot is probably the most time consuming part of it all. Multiply the set up by 40+ different photos and you get a sense of how time consuming these posts are.

Beautiful and just in time for a special dinner I’d like to make for the man tonight! Alas, I’m rather lame in some of my kitchen goodies (and this is obviously a great excuse to hit Bed, Bath & Beyond soon). I do have the large muffin tins. I caught your explanation above about under-baking them a bit because of trying to plate – do you think the large tin will work?

And – because I’ve never made a lava cake – will the center stay soft after they completely cool? I’m just trying to get my timing down for dinner.

I think the large muffin tins should work, but again, I haven’t made them with them. You might have to check at 6 minutes, 8 minutes, 10 minutes, etc to see where they are in the baking time. You want to make sure the sides of the cake are baked firm, but the inside is still soft, which can be a bit of a balancing act.

That said, ,the center should stay soft even as it cools (and you haven’t baked it too long), but it won’t be quite as runny as when it’s hot. You can microwave the cake for 20 to 30 seconds to warm it up and make it more runny. Or you can make the batter ahead of time, refrigerate it, and then bring it back to room temperature to bake right away. Since they only need 10 minutes or so in the oven, this might be another option (though you might have to let them cool a bit before you can get them out of the muffin tins.

I had to run to the store yesterday and found some 6-ounce custard cups. Pork chops, tomato soup and risotto wrecked my timing, and gin and full bellies left us with no room to make these last night. I love that you told me I could make the batter ahead – I can mix it up quick today, then bake them at dinner tonight.

I’m still going to try a couple in the muffin tins as an experiment – thanks again!

Hi Irvin! I love this and especially appreciate how much work it is to make it wordless. My two teens love molten lava cakes so I am going to forward this recipe on to them and see what they think. I just bought my daughter two baking books for her birthday and really searched to find ones with good explanations and PICTURES! So hard to learn how to do something you’ve never done if you can’t see what it looks like.

Having said that, I think one of the many things that blogs do the best is bringing more how-to photography into recipes – for people learning to cook something – it is just invaluable. Bravo!

Thanks Beth! I need to do more “process” photos on my regular blog posts, but I’m usually too pressed for time to do them. But I agree. How-to photography is one of the things that makes blogs so great. Happy Valentine’s to you!

I love your concept of a wordless post and I love this recipe as well. I don’t have any Maker’s Mark on hand, should I substitute or just eliminate? I actually don’t have anything but beer and wine in house.

No problem! You can substitute dark rum as well, but if you don’t have anything other than beer or wine in the house, try using two tablespoons of fresh brewed coffee or two tablespoons of beer (especially if you have a dark dry stout beer like Guiness).

That said, you can certainly just leave it out completely! It makes the batter a bit thicker though, so you may need to adjust the cook time down to 10 minutes instead of 12. I would check the oven around 10 minutes to see if the sides and top have firmed up and if they still look undercooked, stick them back in for a couple more minutes. Just don’t over bake, because you want the inside to still be gooey!

I ended up doing them in a muffin tin (my classes finished after the stores closed so I couldn’t go buy new ramequins) and the cakes themselves turned out fine (baked them for 7 minutes) but they were pretty hard to unmold… Most of them cracked at the bottom and one completely died ^.^’ but oh well they were very good, thanks for the recipe.

And by the way, I really like your blog 🙂 made your cinnamon spice bun cookies around Christmas and they were amazing (sex in my mouth! haha your post about the black forest cookies made me laugh so hard).
If one day I make it across the continent (I live in Montreal) I’ll definitely come to one of your DIY dessert events 😀

Yes, I can imagine that the hardest part of making them in muffin tins is actually unmolding them! That’s what’s nice about having them in the ramekins. You can individually unmold each cake directly on to the plate. Especially since the cakes tend to be a bit more delicate with the “molten lava” on the inside.

but I’m glad they were still tasty! And yes, if you ever make it here to SF, let me know…the DIY desserts event is open to everyone!

Good question! Of course you could add the eggs earlier, but since this is a wordless recipe, there’s not real way for me to show that you have to let the chocolate and butter cool down.

I could show a timer and have a picture of the melted chocolate just sitting there for “five minutes” or so to cool down, but it’s part of the limitations of the “wordless recipes” concept. Hot, just melted chocolate, looks pretty much the same as cooled down melted chocolate in a photograph. And I didn’t want people adding eggs to hot melted chocolate and cooking the eggs by the chocolate heat.

So I swapped the confectioners’ sugar/flour and egg order. Once you add the dry ingredients and mix them in, the mixture cools down enough to add the eggs. But feel free to do it the conventional way by letting the chocolate cool and adding the eggs. Either way should work fine.

That is beautiful. I can’t believe you took the time to take all of those photos. I’m too lazy for that. Not to mention, my camera would be in even worse food encrusted shape than it already is. Beautiful post. Beautiful couple. 🙂

Brilliant. One of my biggest pet peeves is cheater Molten Chocolate Cake, where it’s obvious from taste and looks that the molten part of the chocolate cake was piped in separately. Look how easy this is! What a great subject for one of your wordless recipes. I will have to try this for our next celebration.

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The Baker, Writer, Recipe Maker

Hey there! Thanks for visiting my blog. I'm Irvin Lin, an IACP-Award winning photographer, award winning baker, award winning graphic designer, storyteller, recipe developer, writer and average joe bon vivant. Hilarity often ensues when I'm involved. I currently reside in San Francisco in the neighborhood people have recently taken to calling "The Gastro" - a block from Dolores Park and right near Tartine Bakery, Bi Rite Market & Creamery, and Delfina.

I can also be found at various food events around the city. Feel free to contact me by clicking on that picture of me up above or emailing me eatthelove {at} gmail {dot} com.

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